Rebuilding
by shadowdragon1993
Summary: Within the walls of of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, while on the run (DH) Ron does the unthinkable. Now after the war is won and the world celebrates, Hermione is left to live with the memory's. But she is not alone, Minerva Mcgonagall is determined to save her, and maybe just maybe help them both find the happiness they dream of. HG/MM trigger warnings rape, suicide. R&R please.
1. The fall

**Rebuilding**

**Ave.**

**I don't think this is going to be a long one just something to do as I'm kinda stuck on Thorn.**

**The plot for this just popped into my head at work and I figured why not. You know the drill R&amp;R if you have something to say or you know PM me.**

The war was over, the light victorious and the world was in celebration. Hogwarts the final battle ground was silent, everyone had gone home to cerebrate and morn those that were lost. Smoke still drifted up slowly here and there, walls crumbled and blackened. This place once home to so many now sat broken and sad, left in ruin as the world moved on without it. Much like me I mused as I sat at the top of the astronomy tower, legs hanging over the edge a bottle of fire whisky clasped between my palms. I sat there and looked at the shattered remains of my home and thought that it was as good a place as any for this, my last stand. I laughed drunkenly at my own joke as I rose to my feet on the thin wall, swallowing the last of the whisky savouring the burn before hurling the now empty bottle as far as I could. In the silence of the world around me I heard it hit the ground, so far below, shattering into a million pieces never to be put back together. I smiled for the first time in... well couldn't remember the last time I smiled. Casting my arms out ether side of me I looked one last time at my broken home and closed my eyes, listening to the silence, feeling the wind push against my body whispering of peace, with a soft sigh of relief I let the wind push me off the tower and into oblivion.

The wind screamed past me as I fell, ripping through my hair and clothes, and I screamed with it, not in fear but in agony as behind my closed eyelids my life, every memory pushed to the fore of my mind and I was forced to watch. Seconds becoming hours then days as I fell into memory

A girl no more than five crying alone in a park only to be found minutes later by frantic parents laughing as hundreds of butterfly's danced around her.

A girl of eight crying book clutched to her chest as several other children shouted and called names through rocks and laughed at her tears, a teacher looking on, later to be heard say it was only playing that it builds character.

A girl of eleven clutching a letter to her chest relief filling her, she was not alone.

The troll.

The stone.

Frozen, trapped within her own body.

Time in the palm of her hand.

The challenges, watching Harry, a brother, fighting again and again for his life.

The ministry.

Fighting within the walls of her home while others slept on unaware.

The war, running always running the locket. Ron, eyes filled with...

"NO!" the scream was ripped from my very soul I would not live that again. I pulled my eyes open against the wind, tears poring down my face, and laughed a laugh worthy of Bellatrix herself as I saw the ground so close, at last I would be free.

"HERMIONE! ARRESTO MOMENTUM!" the voice cried, Scottish ascent thick as horror filled the caster. Hermione last thoughts as she hit the ground. "Maybe now I can sleep."

**Tell me what you think should a carry on. Thanks for reading.**


	2. First Awakening

**Rebuilding**

Hermione

_A flash of light... a foot crashing into my ribs... body frozen... "I can't fight back"... torn clothing... PAIN... "finally its over"... _"if you tell him he will probably kill me... distracted and then how will he win this war... tell him and hundreds will die."..._ lying on the floor... blood... hearing the door... "I can't let him see me like this"... downstairs..._"I'm fine Harry just tired."_...blue eyes, red hair...whispered words... hot, wet breath in my ear... _"you are mine now bitch, and I will have you any time, anywhere"_..._

"NO!" The scream ripped from my throat so hard that I tasted blood. That sick smile the only thing I could see. Then hands where griping, me holding me down, restraining me. "no not again. please, not again." the plea was desperate, the hands just tightened there hold. _"not again, please gods not again."_ I was sobbing, my body consumed with so much pain.

"Shhh my bonny lass, your safe, I promise your safe now." The voice thick with the brogue of the highlands, wild and beautiful. But still I struggled, I had to get away, I needed to get up and run, run and never stop. The hand gripped me tighter holding me flush against a soft body now "Damn it, she will'na stop, Poppy the potion now!" The voice was sharp, I whimpered "Shhh lass its ok. I promise everything will be ok" a sharp pain in my arm. My struggles slowing, stopping, my body once again betraying me. I was crying now, tears burning down my face. I looked up at my captor and saw green eye's not blue, long black hair not short red. A moment of clarity as my body shut down. One last thought crossed my mind as unconsciousness claimed me. "Why couldn't you have just let me die."

Minerva

"Why couldn't you have just let me die." Those pain filled words clawed at my soul, as I gently lowered the now unconscious girl back onto the bed. "Poppy a dreamless sleep potion, if you donna mind." My accent, something I had long ago learnt to control, was spilling free, and right now by the amount of time it took Poppy to act I was guessing it was making me a bit hard to understand. As the body I held flush against mine finally relaxed, I took a moment to look around the room, one of the few that had survived the battle, and sighed, so many memories in this place and many of the most recent involving the woman within my arms and one or more of her friends. That thought called to mine the reason I was here today.

Hermione.

I had been walking the grounds when I had heard the crash of broken glass and the distant sound of laughter, I had believed at the time that it was the last of the free Deatheaters come revel in the wreckage of this once proud castle, its destruction thought of as a victory in the face of their monumental defeat. Wand lifted before me I had reached the base of the astronomy tower, to find only the shattered remains of a whiskey bottle, no other signs of humanity. Then laughter again rang across the broken grounds and I looked up to that accursed tower and there she stood, on the turrets so far above me, arms flung out body arched and the most peaceful smile I had ever seen gracing a face that had seen more horrors then one so young should ever have witnessed. And before I could move, before I could blink, she was falling. Falling and I was frozen for an eternal moment in time, watching as she fell through endless space, the peace morphing to fear, horror as the ground rushed up to meet her. It was at the moment that her eye's shot open, so filled with pain that my body was finally released from its self-induced paralysis, my hands and lips moving instinctively, the spell spilling from my lips before I even thought to cast it.

The spell had work but only in part, as her body had slowed its decent but didn't stop, she hit the ground hard, limbs flung out at odd angels, like a broken doll. I had lifted her body into my arms being as careful as possible so as not to hurt her and carried her through the castle, up winding staircases and down long crumbling corridors, all the way to the hospital wing and Poppy. As I walked I noticed how light she was, weighing little more then a child and so thin her cheeks sunken, she looked almost skeletal. I wondered how I could have missed this, how had I been so consumed in my own affairs that I missed that which was now thrust before me. She was a student someone I was sworn to protect, no she was more then that she was a friend, and I should have seen that she needed help.

I held her close to me for a moment longer before laying her gently back against the crisp white sheets, trying to make her as comfortable as possible, and retook my seat at her bedside to once again keep vigil over the broken woman who had, throughout the war, come to mean more to me then any other. "You are not alone any more lass, and I will stand by your side and help you even should you refuse my help. You will come to find that a cat is far more stubborn then a mule."


	3. What would you have done?

**Rebuilding**

**Warning: swearing ahead, plus well general unpleasantness Hermione tells all. This chapter was written to inspire emotion and I wasn't aiming for laughter. Prosed at own rick. I don't want any angry reviews because you ignored this N/A ok.**

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There is a moment between waking and sleep, less then a second in time, where you don't know anything, not who you are, where you are, what happened before you went to sleep or what happened when you were ten, you just drift. This is my favourite moment, this moment of pure nothingness. But alas nothing lasts. I woke slowly, it was the pain I felt first, it seemed to be everywhere, my very self seemed to hurt as if for that moment I was not a being in pain but pain its self. Then came the cold, soul deep, burning cold. It was at this point that I woke fully and became aware of my body, of the shivering that was almost convulsive, the fact that my right leg hurt more then my left that it hurt to breathe to deeply, but mostly I became aware of a burning heat resting on my stomach. It was this that made me open my eyes, and what I saw was one of the most bizarre thing I had seen.

Lying atop my stomach was a large grey and black tabby cat, it was curled up tight, paws tucked close, and its tail was wrapped tightly around it, the very tip flicking slowly, but that wasn't the strange bit, no it was the fact that the tabby was glaring angrily at madam Pomfrey, and the healer glaring right back.

"Don't give me that look woman, she needs to go to St mungo's she was obviously r-r...hurt by someone and if the stunt on the tower says anything its that she needs help, the type of help I can't give. I can heal the skin, bones and everything in between but not the mind. I can not fix the heart." there was pain in her voice and tears in her eyes when she finished. I felt the tabby's claws flex against my stomach as her anger mounted but I was speaking before she got a chance to move.

"How _dear_ you. You didn't have a fucking clue, you weren't left _paralysed_ on the ground by one of your best friend as he _fucked_ you, all the while telling you just how pathetic you are, how from that point on you were to be his _bitch _because he was stronger, faster and he felt like it. You didn't have to hide the bruises, cuts the _fear_ from the only ally you had in the world because to tell him would risk detracting him for trying to saving the fucking world from a soulless _tyrant_." there were tears burning down my face now, and both the healer and the cat were frozen, the tabby's claws sinking deep into my skin, but I wouldn't stop now, I couldn't.

"Were you there when we were captured by Snatchers and taken to Malfoy Manor? Bellatrix took a special liking to me. I wonder do you know what it feels like to be hit with the crucio? People say it feels like acid in your veins, or being skinned alive and maybe when cast by anyone else it does but Bella, she really loved that spell, so much that she adapted it, evolved it into something so much worse. Her spell ignited every pain receptor in my body so that all I could feel was pain, unendurable, unending pain. But that's not all she took a page from the Dementor's book and had the pain force you to relive your most painful memory. What do you think mine was, hmm?" I was shaking now gasping for each breath, but still the words pored from me.

"Do you wanna know the best bit, the spell stopped you from losing consciousness so you were trapped until she, in her every present mercy chose to release you. I begged and cried and screamed so hard that I _broke_ my voice. But I survived and I didn't give her what she wanted and then I was saved and taken from one hell to another. Trapped inside a tiny cottage with _Him _while I was utterly defenceless. I will be eternally grateful to Fleur and Luna, they never once left me alone, I don't know if they knew or if they were just trying to help me heal from Bella's tender care but they saved me and I will never be able to repay them." I was almost finished with my confession, story, rant. I didn't know what would happen when I stopped talking, but I knew I had to finish.

"after all this, after everything, all I wanted was to be left alone to curl up in some dark corner and be forgotten and to forget, but no I had to come back here to this place that I had always felt to be my home and fight in a fucking war, to watch my friends die around me and be unable to stop it. So please forgive me for my _little stunt on the tower_ but what would you have done in my place? Who could I have confided in hmm? Harry? Who all ready feels the weight of every death as if he struck the killing blow. How about Ginny? Who's brother is the one to cause half my pain. I have no one, no confident, no hero to save me from my demons, no one so forgive me if acted the cowered, but I ask again what would you have done in my place."

There was silence then, that seemed to stretch on endlessly as we all processed what had just been revealed.

Then quite suddenly the cat leapt from my stomach changing, morphing mid fall to stand on two feet as a dishevelled tear stained Minerva Mcgonagall, who then to the great surprise of all turned and climbed onto my tiny hospital bed and wrapped me in her arms.

"You are not alone Mo gradh, I promise you are not alone."

It was those words that broke me as nothing else could have and as I sobbed and cried into the arms of the timeless Minerva Mcgonagall, I had only one thought. 'if she leaves me too I will surely die. Shattered hearts just don't beat'.

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**And there you have it the long awaited (sorry about that) next chapter to my little tale of broken things. If you sit now tears hitting your keyboards you have my heart felt sympathies but I will remind you all that you chose to walk the path of my twisted mind. **

**Until the next time sweet readers.**


	4. Nightmares

**Sorry about the loooong wait. Hope it's worth it.**

It had been a week since my breakdown. A week spent flinching at shadows, and loud noses. A week of sleeping in the guest bedroom of the headmistresses quarters with a silver tabby curled upon my chest, or at my back, or on the pillow next to mine. Always close. Always there.

The castle was being rebuilt around me. Walls rising once again proud and strong. Seeming to mock me with their strength as my heart and soul remained crumbled, broken, within my chest.

I didn't sleep more then three/four hours a night, preferring to nap during the day, in patches of sunlight when I could and curled, rapped in blankets by a fire when the sun would not shine.

Minerva had restricted access to the castle, so that only the people she wanted here could get past the new wards. Harry came every day, only leaving at night to stay at the Burrow. He would bring Ginny some days, and to my shame I would avoid her completely. I just couldn't stand to see her, she looked to much like her brother.

_He_ could not enter the grounds. The first day he had stood just beyond the gates, anger radiating from him in waves I could feel from where I sat on the window seat of Mineva's living room. I didn't leave the room the entire time he was there. He stayed for less and less time each day. Now he just comes to send harry off and meet him when he leaves, and each and every morning he tests the wards, seeing if they will let him in, and each and every morning I feel his attempted. The down side of having helped create the new wards.

It had become routine now, every morning I would feel the brush of his magic against mine. I had learnt early on not to eat before this, the feel of him there almost a physical touch, was to much for me to bare without losing my breakfast. Harry would come then to knock at the outer office door and beg Minerva to let _him_ in. She never did and had promised she never would.

"For as long as you chose to stay here, I will do everything in my power to make this place a haven for you. You will always be safe here, I promise."

When he had exhausted whatever argument he had prepared that day, Harry would concede defeat with a sigh and ask to see me.

And a new day would begin. We would eat breakfast together, just the three of us, before moving on to whatever part of the castle was being worked on that day. The days pasted almost easily this way. The work was hard but almost mindless, the spells needed so well know I could perform them wordlessly now. It helped that I was never left to my thoughts, there was always someone there to detract me when I sank too deep into myself. Fleur and Luna came to help most day and where they were Bill and Neville were almost guaranteed to be close by. Harry was never far away, always there with a smile and some sarcastic comment or terrible joke designed to make me laugh, it never worked but I loved him for trying. He thought I was still dealing with what Bellatrix had done, and a guess he was partly right. Then there was Minerva herself, my angel in green. The only time she left my side was when she knew, without a doubt, that I would not be alone. I'm half convinced she has recruited Fleur and Luna to this end as one or both of them would always be there when Minerva couldn't be.

Nights were... not so good. After everyone left for the night, Minerva and I would retire to her rooms. The Heads rooms were by far the largest personal living quarters within Hogwarts, with a master bedroom, guest bedroom (both with en-suite bathrooms), a large living room, a small kitchen/dinning room, a small inner office and my favourite by far, a large personal library. It was here surrounded by the endless wonder of the written word that I spent most of my time. It was easy you see to hide in someone else's mind to lose myself within the pages and thoughts of another being long gone form this world, until my eyes burned and I could not stay awake a moment longer. Often I would sleep there in the large armchair by the fire. But every night no matter where I was, the nightmares would come and rip from me what little peace I had found in the day.

_The spell hit with no warning, striking my left shoulder, the force of it throwing me to the ground where I was left unable to move._

"_Do you like the spell, 'Mione it's a little something I've been working on, just for you. A variation of Petrificus Totalus, it paralyses the body without locking it in place. I can move you about, see?" Ruff hands gripped my arms too tight as he flipped me over, onto my back. Hot, wet breath ghosted over my skin as he bent over me. Soft fingers dug into my skin, as a sick smile stretched chapped lips._

"_I know you want me. I've seen you watching me, seen the lust in you're eye when you think I'm not looking." He leaned closer, whispering into my ear. "I bet you like it ruff, hmm?" Ripping, tearing, clothing and skin under over eager hands..._

_'It hurts, oh gods it hurts' thrusting, grunting, cruel laughter, pain 'Why... please stop, please' tears burning hot flow into my hair where he grips, pulling to tight, to hard, to much 'gods let it stop, please let it stop..._

"Hermione"

_his hand pressed into the back of my neck, my cheek rubbed raw against the cracked and broken floorboards 'please stop'_

"Hermione!"

_panting breath against my ear, hand tightening around my throat 'I can't breath, gods let him finish, I can't breath'_

"Hermione! Shhh, it's alright I've got you. I've got you. It's alright." Strong arms held me close, and for a second I fought against them mind locked in the nightmare, but then a gentle rumble begins in the chest pressed so tight to my back, the soft purring bringing me back, bringing me home. I turned in her arms, pressed myself as close as I could get. I needed to be surrounded by her, my angel in green.

"I've got you Mo gradh, I will never let him touch you again. I've got you."

I drifted to the endless sound of her purring, safe in the circle of her arms and the soul deep knowledge that here, in this one place I was protected from my demons both real and imagined.

**Tell me what you think.**


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